Category: Євросоюз

Beijing — China’s Defense Ministry on Monday announced joint naval and air drills with Russia starting this month, underscoring the closeness between their militaries as Russia presses its grinding invasion of Ukraine. The ministry said the “Northern United-2024” exercises would take place in the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk farther north, but gave no details. It said the naval and air drills aimed to improve strategic cooperation between the two countries and “strengthen their ability to jointly deal with security threats.” The notice also said the two navies would cruise together in the Pacific, the fifth time they …

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Washington — The transfer of ballistic missiles from Iran to Russia would signify a “dramatic escalation” of Tehran’s support for Moscow, and the United States is prepared to respond with “significant consequences,” the State Department said Monday.  U.S. media outlets reported last week that Washington believed Iran had transferred the weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine, and the European Union has said allies shared “credible” intelligence that Tehran had done so.  “Any transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia would represent a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told …

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london — Kate, the princess of Wales, has completed chemotherapy and will make a limited number of public appearances in the coming months, bolstering Britain’s royal family after it was rocked by the twin cancer diagnoses of the princess and King Charles III. The 42-year-old wife of Prince William on Monday released a video in which she appeared alongside her husband and children as she described how difficult the past nine months have been for her family and expressed “relief” at completing her course of treatment. “Life as you know it can change in an instant, and we have had to …

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WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s security officials said Monday they have foiled cyberattacks and online blackmail attempts by groups acting for Russian and Belarusian services.  Poland has registered up to 1,000 online attacks daily targeting government institutions and agencies, officials said, linking them to the country’s support for neighboring Ukraine in its 2 1/2-year war against Russia’s invasion.  The group that was broken up was seeking access to information in state and individual companies with the goal of blackmailing them, said Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski.  He said that in the first half of 2024, more than 400,000 attempted or successful cyberattacks …

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Seoul, South Korea — Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin sent greetings to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on the occasion of North Korea’s founding anniversary, state media KCNA said on Monday. “I am sure that the comprehensive strategic partnership between Russia and the DPRK will be strengthened in a planned way thanks to our joint efforts,” Putin said, according to KCNA. DPRK is short for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name. Xi called for deeper strategic communication and cooperation with North Korea in his message, KCNA said. Last year, Kim marked the …

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FRANKFURT, Germany — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Sunday he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agree that Russia should be included in a future peace conference aimed at ending Russia’s war against Ukraine. He called for stepped up efforts to solve the conflict. A previous peace conference June 15-16 in Switzerland ended with 78 countries expressing support for Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” but otherwise left the path forward unclear. Russia did not participate. “I believe that now is the moment when we must discuss how we get out of this war situation faster than the current impression is,” Scholz said in an …

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Athens, Greece — Greek opposition leader Stefanos Kasselakis was ousted by his party’s central committee Sunday via a motion of no confidence, just a year after his election to the post by party cadres who accused him of being an authoritarian and not fully ideologically aligned with the party.  After an often tense and acrimonious two-day session, the central committee of the left-wing Syriza party approved the no-confidence motion 163-120, with three members voting blank. Another eight abstained.  It was not a single event that precipitated Kasselakis’ ouster but a buildup of discontent over the past year, which caused many who …

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New York — Jannik Sinner beat Taylor Fritz 6-3, 6-4, 7-5 with a relentless baseline game to win the U.S. Open men’s championship on Sunday, less than three weeks after being exonerated in a doping case. The No. 1-ranked Sinner, a 23-year-old from Italy, won the second Grand Slam trophy of his nascent career — the other was at the Australian Open in January — and prevented No. 12 Fritz from ending a major title drought for American men that has lasted 21 years. Andy Roddick’s triumph at Flushing Meadows in 2003 was the last Slam title for a man from …

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FRANKFURT, Germany — Volkswagen is considering closing some factories in its home country for the first time in the German automaker’s 87-year history, saying it otherwise won’t meet the cost-cutting goals it needs to remain competitive. CEO Oliver Blume also told employees Wednesday that the company must end a three-decade-old job protection pledge that would have prohibited layoffs through 2029. The statements have stirred outrage among worker representatives and concern among German politicians. Here are some things to know about the difficulties at one of the world’s best-known auto brands: What is Volkswagen proposing and why? Management says the company’s core …

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Kyiv, Ukraine — A Russian drone violated Romania’s airspace during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, the NATO member reported Sunday, urging Moscow to stop what it described as an escalation. The incident occurred as Russia carried out attacks on “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube River in Ukraine, Romania’s Ministry of National Defense said. Romania deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace, and NATO allies were kept informed, the ministry said. Romanian emergency authorities also issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. Preliminary data indicates there may be an “impact zone” in an uninhabited area near the …

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Paris — Tens of thousands of pupils in France are going through a slightly different return to school this autumn, deprived of their mobile phones. At 180 “colleges,” the middle schools French children attend between the ages of 11 and 15, a scheme is being trialed to ban the use of mobile phones during the entire school day. The trial of the “pause numerique” (“digital pause”), which encompasses more than 50,000 pupils, is being implemented ahead of a possible plan to enforce it nationwide from 2025. Right now, pupils in French middle schools must turn off their phones. The experiment takes …

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VENICE, ITALY — Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s first English-language movie “The Room Next Door,” which tackles the hefty themes of euthanasia and climate change, won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday. Starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, the film received an 18-minute standing ovation when it premiered at Venice earlier in the week — one of the longest in recent memory. Almodovar is a darling of the festival circuit and was awarded a lifetime achievement award at Venice in 2019 for his bold, irreverent and often funny Spanish-language features. He also won an Oscar in …

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paris — A Paris court in May detained and charged a couple on accusations that they were involved in Iranian plots to kill Jews in Germany and France, police sources told Agence France-Presse. Authorities charged Abdelkrim S., 34, and his partner Sabrina B., 33, on May 4 with conspiring with a criminal terrorist organization and placed them in pretrial detention.  The case, known as “Marco Polo” and revealed Thursday by French news website Mediapart, signals a revival in Iranian state-sponsored terrorism in Europe, according to a report by France’s General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) seen by AFP.  “Since 2015, the …

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BELGRADE, Serbia — A pride march Saturday in Serbia’s capital pressed for the demand that the populist government improve the rights of the LGBTQ+ community who often face harassment and discrimination in the conservative Balkan country.  The march in central Belgrade was held under police protection because of possible attacks from right-wing extremists. Organizers said assailants had assaulted a young gay man in Belgrade two days ago and took away his rainbow flag. Serbia is formally seeking entry into the European Union, but its democratic record is poor. Serbia’s LGBTQ+ community is demanding that authorities pass a law allowing same-sex partnerships …

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KYIV, UKRAINE — Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Saturday it was deeply concerned by reports about a possible impending transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia. In a statement emailed to reporters, the ministry said the deepening military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow was a threat to Ukraine, Europe and the Middle East, and called on the international community to increase pressure on Iran and Russia. CNN and The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Iran had transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, citing unidentified sources. Reuters reported in August that Russia was expecting the imminent delivery of hundreds of Fath-360 close-range …

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LONDON — The heads of the U.S. CIA and Britain’s spy service said in an op-ed on Saturday that “staying the course” in backing Ukraine’s fight against Russia was more important than ever and they vowed to further their cooperation there and on other challenges. The op-ed in the Financial Times by CIA Director William Burns and Richard Moore, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, was the first ever jointly authored by heads of their agencies. “The partnership lies at the beating heart of the special relationship between our countries,” they wrote, noting that their services marked 75 years of partnership …

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As Kyiv continues its offensive inside Russia and the Russian army nears a key hub in Ukraine’s Donbas region, leaders of more than 50 nations, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, met in Germany on Friday to help get Kyiv the support it seeks. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb reports. …

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